No Mike, we don't... we can separate "belief" in the demonstrable (2+2=4) from belief in the supernatural; theists, on the other hand, cannot!

Hence my use of quotes around "believe".

English is a very powerful way to express yourself - it has the 2nd highest redundancy of all popular languages - but when a word like belief is hijacked in two different meanings, then one side has to stop using it to avoid confusion.

Something else to be mindful of here too. We don't "believe" in evolution. We understand it, follow it... etc. but NEVER believe in it. Belief is a word that should be reserved for the intangible - and in science that is limited to very few theoretical objects at the extremes of physics.

Not our fault, but if we want to affect them, it's something we just have to deal with. We're the rational ones here, dealing with reality as it is, rather than imagining things as we want them to be. This is one of those things we have to deal with as it is.

I mean, obviously their education isn't very good, or they wouldn't still be theists. :-P

I suppose it depends what company you keep and what influence you want to have. Words can sway things one way or another. Conversation and human interaction is a subtle thing - and words can change outcomes - as well as intentions and emotions.

Who takes evolution on "faith"? No one I know. Evolution happens. The theory of evolution is the best explanation of how it happens. I've read a dozen or so books on it, and I think it's true because of the soundness of the arguments for it. I do trust science, but that's because science has earned my trust by being right about so, so many things, by the transparency of the peer review process, and by its self-correcting nature. A scientific idea that is wrong won't be around for long. A religious idea that is wrong, unverifiable, untestable, unfalsifiable, will continue to be crammed down our throats. No supreme being created the world in six days, yet this three-thousand-year-old idea is accepted by a majority of Americans on faith. The entire controversy is the result of a PR campaign by the Christian right. If someone accepts the T of E because it's in a science text book, that's the result of trust in the system that produces science texts. People who believe in creationism accept on faith a three-thousand-year-old book (Genesis) written by people entirely ignorant of science and the way that book is attributed (to God) and interpreted by semi-educated, self-righteous morons who lack even a basic understanding of the theory of evolution and of scientific method. I trust the scientific process because it works; I don't trust the Ted Haggards or John Hagees or Hal Lindseys of the world because there is no trustworthy evidence behind their opinions and because their logic is flawed. Their word I would have to take on faith because all the science contradicts them.

Equivocation isn't all that complicated. Words have different meanings depending on the context in which they are used, and they change meaning over time. (There was a time, for example, when "gay" mostly meant "cheerful.") In any meaningful discussion, we should all use the same words in the same sense, which means to get anywhere we have to define our terms for that particular discussion. Scientists do that, religious believers do not. They have often told me I have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow, thereby equating their faith in the supernatural with my trust in evidence and logic. The other night I recorded a TV film entitled "I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist." I haven't watched it yet, but from the title I would says it's more equivocation, trying to make a connection between their faith and my thinking. Aargh.

People who believe in creationism accept on faith a three-thousand-year-old book (Genesis) written by people entirely ignorant of science and the way that book is attributed (to God) and interpreted by semi-educated, self-righteous morons who lack even a basic understanding of the theory of evolution and of scientific method.

Pulling out a dictionary doesn't help the matter. There are all of the possible definitions of a word, and then there's the definition that people mean 80% of the time that they use a word. And then there's the loaded definition that people with an agenda use.

You need to use words in a way that doesn't lend itself to distortion and abuse by the equivocating idiots.